Perception and Delusion
by Hymntanra
Summary: Not enough evidence could be brought to the courts to get Adachi convicted. But they were more than willing to declare Adachi mentally unfit. Now he's left contemplating if everything really was a delusion or not.


Tohru Adachi occasionally considered the ramifications of the untrustworthy memory.

He had, of course, considered this when locked up. The doctors said he was getting worse by the month, suffering 'delusions' of a television world that he could use to murder people. The inane logic that had been presented for his case had actually been the reason the sentence was later overturned—Adachi could tell them he murdered the people, but without evidence, there wasn't much the courts could do. The young detective had been hysterically thrilled when he had heard of the overturned case but his face had fallen greatly when he heard their next verdict cast upon him.

_Due to a surplus of delusional behavior and severe paranoid, Adachi Tohru has been deemed unfit to function in normal society. We cannot create decisive evidence that he committed these murders. However, after mental evaluations, we can in fact decree that he is unfit to function in normal society and is a danger to those around him._

Mental evaluations indeed! Adachi scowled. Is that what they called dragging him off into some back room to get reemed out and examined by some half-wit psychologist who could barely tell her ass from her elbow? Some stupid woman who thought if she checked off enough symptoms on the list, she'd would be able to keep her job and no one would question her? Oh yes, he thought with a sneer, idiots like HER were the reason he was caged like a defenseless bird.

As much as he hated it, though, the man could see why the courts had drawn that kind of a verdict. Adachi couldn't even believe that members of the police force had bought the ridiculous story that those kids spat out—before finding that other world, he himself would have scoffed at how ridiculous it all sounded. The court had spurted out all this extra nonsense about 'dangerously high levels of paranoia' and 'suffering under delusions of superiority, that admittedly could drive him to injure others'…but above all, the detective had claimed he could climb into a television. That was pretty much what had landed him in this padded cell.

This ugly, white padded box with his arms wrapped around the body. As time passed, they had deemed him even more unstable…which was ridiculous, he figured, but they would do as they pleased no matter his opinion. Once deemed crazy, he knew he no longer had a say in what they did to him. And yet those stupid children had not been put there, the stories they spun being cast off as young fantasies.

Occasionally, though, sitting in that cell…Adachi questioned himself.

He questioned his memory.

_Can I trust you?_

Because the more he thought, the more he was confined…the more he realized how ridiculous his own claims were. Jumping into a television—it felt so real to him, but he realized that just because it felt real didn't MAKE it real. When Adachi thought this, he would squeeze his eyes shut and force the rest of the world away from him and tell himself to _not give in to their lies because you know what is right, Adachi._ _You always know._

Memory is based on perception, and perception is based on opinion—opinions towards the world, and what a person believes it to be. Adachi thought this, with his head hung, every time his mind tried to convince him that maybe it had been a fantasy all along. Maybe he really was a blithering idiot who had just gone insane and fantasied another world. A world that fed into his own delusions about how the real world was—a world where people showed their true colors, and he didn't have to distance himself from them.

_But the children…_

They knew. Oh, they knew…

Adachi knew they could create answers. He requested to see them. ANY of them. None of them came. None of them wanted to see him, for obvious reasons—the man had caused them trouble, and now was deemed a nutcase. He had been hoping that the boy…Dojima's trouble making nephew…would allow him an audience but not even the boy would come to his aid. Only Dojima occasionally visited, with a grim look on his face and a gift from the ever exuberant Nanako. That girl had never understood how 'Adachi' and 'criminal' went into the same sentence…much less with a crime such as murder.

_Maybe it never happened. Maybe I acted it all out in my mind._

_SHUT UP._

He nearly vomited at that—he was arguing with a voice in his head, and that could never be good. That really WAS crazy man behavior. He absentmindedly considered if it wasn't a voice in his head but rather that 'Persona' thing…the darkness that he had made his own, simply by accepting these traits that he already acknowledged so long ago. Of course, it had been there even before he accepted it…and he was well aware he couldn't utilize those things in the real world anyways. They only place they worked was the Other World. Which was a pity—his shadow had been childishly simple to conquer.

The only people who could answer were people he would never see.

Or so he thought.

One day, which he was assured to be sunny and bright (not that he'd ever know), Dojima brought guests. Adachi stared at them from behind the glass—Yuu, Nanako, and a black haired girl that looked very familiar were walking behind his ex-boss. Amagi, he believed her to be called. She was a pretty girl, he supposed, but not particularly his type. Her eyes were too sharp and too judgmental—or that was at least how Adachi read her.

"I brought you those guests you won't be quiet about."

Adachi treated the cop to a wide, deranged smile. "Why thank you. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to sit in on our conversation, seeing as you apparently believe the little 'delusion' that I'm accused of creating?"

Dojima didn't reply. He just moved so the others could sit down. Yuu and Amagi girl stared at him with piercing eyes—Adachi did not back down, staring right back with a feral expression. Finally, Yuu spoke up. "Was there something you wanted to ask us?"

"Why, of course." Adachi replied. "I want to know if my delusion is a delusion."

"Excuse me?" The Amagi spoke up, arching her eyebrows. Adachi frowned visibly. "What do you mean by 'delusion'?"

"Why do you think I was put under a mental evaluation, girl? I claimed, just like you people, that there was a television world. But I'm a grown man, and you all are just children. Although I suppose you aren't anymore." Adachi replied. "When I say that there's a TV world that I used to kill people, and say it seriously, then people cast me off as a nutcase. Further mental evaluation said I was suffering from delusions. So tell me, little girl—was it a delusion? Was it just a little fantasy that I dreamt up?"

"Well, n—" Amagi began, but Yuu interrupted her as he stood up. His chair fell to the ground behind him as the boy focused a steely, emotionless expression at the hospitalized detective.

"Yes."

And that was all Yuu had to say. It was all any of them had to say.

_Adachi didn't believe them._


End file.
